After several minutes of almost perfect silence as he made his way around the second circuit in the 1973 Grand National, it was the unmistakable sound of Red Rum’s nostrils that told Richard Pitman he was in trouble. “It was fast ground that day,” Pitman, now 80, says. “You could hear the horses’ hooves, ‘drmmm drmmm, drmmm drmmm’ but Red Rum had flappy nostrils, so when he exhaled there would be a ‘pwwwrrr, pwwwrrr’ and I can still hear those sounds chasing me now. ‘Drmmm drmmm, pwwwrrr pwwwrr’.”
Anyone who is old enough to have watched the epic, breathtaking heroism of Crisp’s failure to win the 1973 Grand National as it happened, this writer included, is likely to have equally indelible memories of perhaps the most gripping piece of racing theatre to unfold at Aintree.
From the moment Pitman and Crisp took the lead after jumping Becher’s for the first time, the drama was unrelenting and instantly accessible. There was no need to understand the intricacies of handicap weights or ideal trips. As just one among many millions watching at home, I neither knew nor cared that Crisp was a champion two-miler stepping up to four-and-a-half or that he was conceding 23lb to Red Rum, the other joint-favourite at 9-1. All that mattered as he set out on the second circuit, nearly a fence in front of his pursuers, was that my 50p each-way bet – what seven-year-old, after all, can resist a horse named after a snack? – was going to be a winner.
A pitch-perfect relay of commentators on the BBC coverage – Peter O’Sullevan to John Hanmer to Julian Wilson and back to O’Sullevan – provided the soundtrack as Crisp pounded on towards Becher’s for the second time, having been left completely alone by the fall of Grey Sombrero at The Chair.
“From that moment on I couldn’t hear the others,” Pitman says. “It was another circuit before I heard anything. That experience, totally isolated, was strange because of the lack of sound. Every National I’d ridden in, with 40 runners, the sounds were all around you – horses exhaling, hitting fences, jockeys shouting, the sound of hooves. There was just nothing.
“Looking down that line of six fences to Becher’s is a marvellous sight and to do it on a horse who loved every minute of it, it was such a joy and a pleasure. It was unique on that second circuit, in silence, but then I heard Michael O’Hehir, the commentator on the PA system, say ‘and Crisp is 25 lengths clear, Red Rum is coming out of the pack but [Brian] Fletcher is kicking him’ and I just thought ‘that’ll do me’, so I just sat and held him.”
As BBC viewers were watching the stragglers jumping the second Becher’s, Wilson reported that Crisp had already cleared the next. Up in the gallery, a producer was frantically swapping shots between Crisp, jumping alone, and the chasing pack 20 lengths behind.
They were at least 15 lengths to the good turning for home and Crisp took seven strides after the last before Red Rum was over. But those strides were suddenly getting shorter and Pitman was about to make a solitary, and decisive, error.
“We were running in treacle,” he says. “We were going forwards, but it was hard work and then I made the mistake that I’ve been paying for for 50 years. I thought I needed to wake him up, so I picked my whip up with my right hand and he immediately fell away to the left, when I needed him to go right at the Elbow.
“It was a stupid, boyish error. I should have kept two hands on the reins, got him to the Elbow and then used the whip if I needed to. I reckon it cost me two lengths and we lost by three-quarters.”
Red Rum grabbed him two strides from the line. “Brian Fletcher was very clever because he didn’t make his challenge close to me, just in case Crisp had anything left to fight back.”
Aintree 1.45 Banbridge 2.20 Nusret 2.55 A Plus Tard (nb) 3.30 Constitution Hill 4.05 Magic Saint 4.40 Grey Diamond (nap) 5.15 Notkeepinyagoing
Taunton 2.00 Bob And Co 2.35 Aurigny Mill 3.10 Picks Lad 3.45 O’Faolains Lad 4.20 Jet Of Magic 4.55 Phoenix Risen 5.25 Geezer Rockstar
Newcastle 2.10 Amourie 2.45 Joyful Act 3.20 Fade To Gray 3.55 Streak Lightning 4.30 Calypso 5.05 Bella Kopella 5.40 Blazing Son
Chelmsford 5.00 They Don’t Know 5.30 Wynter Wildes 6.00 Rhythm N Hooves 6.30 Rock Chant 7.00 Vape 7.30 Thomas Equinas 8.00 Cappananty Con 8.30 Smooth Ryder
But Crisp had given his all and it had not quite been enough. Red Rum made his way back to the winner’s enclosure accompanied by mounted police, while Pitman and Crisp’s army of backers were left to ponder what might have been.
It took some rather longer to get over it than others. I’m ashamed to say I nursed a grudge against Red Rum for several years until his record third win in 1977 secured his status as an Aintree legend and also, at least in part, helped save the course from the bulldozers.
Pitman, though, came to terms with the bravest of all Aintree defeats much more quickly. “The desolation changed to euphoria within a minute, I promise you,” he says. “I was exhilarated with the ride I’d had. It was the most exciting thing I’d ever done.”
There is a lesson in there for us all.
